


Glisten

by parcequelle



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: Academic Elitism, F/M, Ficlet, Fluff, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-19
Updated: 2009-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 14:26:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4610139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parcequelle/pseuds/parcequelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lily and Rufus, before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glisten

Lily's eyes are shaded by the enormous tinted sunglasses she stole from CeCe's dresser, but he sees all he needs to see in the quirk of her smile. She sprawls beside him, improbably elegant, the curve of her cheekbone turned up towards the sun, and reads Saussure. She is obsessed with the notion of the structure, and there is poorly-repressed glee in her mock-formal voice as she dictates the theory to him while he rolls his eyes and pretends he doesn't understand how value can be confused with signification.

He strums his fingers along his jeans and wishes idly that he'd remembered his guitar. He wonders what Lily would think of him busking in the grounds of her Ivy League college and can't fight his smirk.

"Hey," she says, "pay attention," and she whacks him with the _Course in General Linguistics_ (which, he now knows a hundred times over, was compiled posthumously by students of Saussure). "I'm trying to teach you something vital to your understanding of the--"

"--linguistic structure, yeah, I know."

She lifts her glasses onto her forehead and peers at him. "What were you thinking?"

"Coming here with you? Good question."

"Very funny." She kicks him half-heartedly in the shin. "Before."

He ponders wit but rejects it in favour of truth. "I was thinking I wish I'd brought my guitar. Nice atmosphere for busking, don't you think?"

She wrinkles her nose. "This isn't a _subway station_ , Rufus."

Her snobbishness seems almost innocent, some days, and he laughs in spite of himself. "Try not to sound too privileged, Lil; you are in a hub of non-discriminatory cultural acceptance, right here."

"Don't I know it," she drawls. "They let you in."

He lunges for her as she laughs, knocks her book to the ground and pins her flat with his body, leans in close. "You going to apologise for that?"

She shakes her head. "Never." She's still smiling, and her hair is bright and her eyes are brighter, and Rufus can feel his heart doing really embarrassing pounding things; his mouth goes dry, and he wonders what he was planning to say and why it mattered. Did it matter?

Lily grins up at him, hair everywhere, and he brushes a handful of it out of her eyes and smiles back. "What?" she says.

"Nothing." He shakes his head. "You. You take my breath away," he says, and promptly takes hers.


End file.
